What’s Right with Blogging?

My post last week on What’s Wrong with Blogging has proved to be the hottest post on ProBlogger this week. 45 people have left comments and trackbacks (so far) so its obviously hit a nerve. The discussion is ‘negative’ in nature as I’d asked for (although one or two couldn’t resist being positive) and I think its one of the more worthwhile discussions to have taken place on this blog this year.

I hope its stimulated some thinking that will help bloggers to improve their craft and perhaps given some blog tool developers some ideas about what people are looking for.

In the interest of balance and optimism its time for a discussion on ‘What’s Right with Blogging?’ I’d like to open up this post to all readers to share what they love about blogging. What makes it something that you invest time into? What distinguishes it positively from other forms of websites? What about it makes you purrrrrrr?

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What I like best is the interactive nature of blogs. Before blogs I had published many articles on my sites, and the feedback I received via email was much lower in quantity and quality. The ability to comment and reply to comments pushes blogs a step beyond. Public comments also help reduce redundant feedback.

FREEDOM!
Blogging is the most public expression attainable to most of us. Blogging gives us the ability to act as the perfect example of free press. Not only uninhibited by oppressive governments but also free from the economic restrictions of standard publishing. The blogging of the last five and the next fifteen years will be marked in the future as a huge turning point in the study of history. Before now there seemed to be states and organizations. After now it’ll be clear that there’s a whole lotta people in this world with something to say and a unique perspective on everything.

Blogs are a great distribution mechanism. We’ve all been able to publish on the web on web pages for ten years now, but people had to explicitly “visit” your web pages, even if they knew where to find them. But now with web feeds and subscription feed aggregators, your latest creative works are delivered directly to their screens without them needing to hardly lift a finger.

Combined with web feeds and aggregators, blogs enable more voices to be heard.

It’s the newest evolution of websites – it’s changing the status quo for all sites. It used to be that I’d have to make websites for my clients by hand with expensive software like Dreamweaver. Now I just install a CMS for them (usually a modified WordPress), customize a theme for them and they’re writing content all by themselves after less than a whole day’s work on my part.

Freedom.
Blogs have created what the web promised in 1996 but didn’t deliver, the freedom of anybody with internet access to particpate and have their say to a global audience. It has truly forfilled the promise of free speech in giving the ability to all to practice what legally they have always held rights to but have not had the means to easily partake in
Level playing field
Blogging is essenitally a level playing field that can deliver success to anybody irrelevant of their social status, race or ethnicity. Sure, big media still gets the jump on traffic, but hard work and determination in the blogosphere can and is rewarded. It’s utopian capitalism without (much) Government restriction.
Cost
links back into the other two, but blogging is cheap, and that means more people can be involved, and more numbers is always a good thing in the sense of the greater good, and creates a more diverse and rich blogosphere.

I am a blogger myself, and sinc ei havefound that many many people read it, it’s a forum for me to ventilate things that are real in my world,I don’t expect my readers to be interested in my life, but the fact remains, people do read alot, and I contribute to the growing mass of internet addicts.

Blogs have opened up the world for people in lots of different hobby groups to build international links to share information, news and techniques and to buy and sell their own products in a small way. Many crafts, for example, have benefited from the growth of the blogosphere.